Originally Posted by
ILoveToQuilt
Look at scrapbooking for instance. Five years ago there were specialty shops, large areas of craft stores and "bees"...now (at least in my area of southern NH) you are hard pressed to find scrapbooking items.
I don't think quilting and scrapbooking are equal. I think other handcrafts would be a better comparison, like crocheting or knitting.
Scrapbooking (to me) as we saw it was/is a fad. Papercrafts (as in origami or things like twilling, etc.) aren't a fad, but that particular "mode" seems very dated. (People do more scrapbooks and photo albums, on line, I think, now).
I made scrapbooks when I was in college (in the mid 80's) but it was simply a collection of the things that were special--no extra design pieces, etc. I always put photos in a photo album and saved the scrapbook for the "things" like folders, play flyers, etc. I never really got "into " scrapbooking" in the 80's and 90's, though my daughter seemed fascinated by it, as it seemed to make making photos available a "project" instead of a 5 min. task of simply putting them into an album.
I wasn't part of the quilting phenomenon at its peak in the 70, 80s and 90s, so I don't know it any other way than it is now.
It is really an art form that results in something useful.
I think that by seeing that quilting as been around for literally centuries, we can believe that it's not really going anywhere...though most fabric buying may be on line or in specially large shops than in local ones.